BRICS has come of age, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his address at the 18th summit of the grouping, hosted in New Delhi over the weekend. It is indeed time for the 20-year-old multilateral platform to be evaluated in terms of how its aspirations have translated into outcomes, and, at a larger level, what the grouping represents and what it has achieved as a cohort.

With a grouping as fractured as BRICS, it is naïve to expect a comprehensive consensus on all things, either in letter or in spirit. Then, why have a grouping at all, or bother with summits, goes the argument. The short answer is: In an era of forever wars and interconnectedness of global supply chains, any consensus is better than no consensus, and any summit or meeting is better than no dialogue. The detailed answer must first examine what the present holds for the Global South, represented by BRICS member countries.

Global South long been in back row of decision-making

As Modi observed in his address, the Global South has long been in the back row of decision-making while occupying the front row of consequences. Whether BRICS can change that isn’t as important as the question about the West’s ability to continue to hold the aegis of the global rules-based order. With the ever-growing inconsistency of the US foreign policy, exacerbated by the second Trump presidency’s interventions in Latin America and West Asia, there is a palpable sense of impending doom among the votaries of the 1945 consensus. A diminished United Nations stands as an........

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